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Six numbers to ignore from the presidential campaign

The presidential race has been replete with statistics and data tossed out by the candidates that purport to show something threatening or wrongheaded about their opponent's policies. Typically, they don't just make up their numbers; instead, they take research produced by someone else (often an ideologically friendly source), then apply their own spin. And in many cases, that spin takes the statistic so far out of context, it becomes misleading at best. Here are six examples of numbers frequently cited by the Obama and Romney campaigns that voters should either ignore or take with a very large grain of salt. --Jon Healey

$4,000

(
Michael Sears / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / MCT
)

This is the tax increase that middle-class families will supposedly face if President Obama is re-elected, according to the Romney-Ryan campaign. As the GOP candidate for vice president, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), put it Oct. 13, "President Obama refuses to get serious about spending. And given the president's preference to raise taxes, just to pay the interest on the debt that the president has racked up and proposed, a middle-income family will see their tax bill grow by $4,000 a year."

The figure comes from a blog post published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute think-tank based on some AEI research, but the institute wasn't estimating the cost of specific Obama proposals. Instead, it was estimating how much of the taxes paid by those making $100,000 to $200,000 would go to paying interest on the national debt. By that measure, Romney and Ryan will "raise" tax bills by $2,732, FactCheck.org reported, adding, "That's nonsense, too."